from the well-hello-there dept

As pointed out in the comments by Matthew S, this story has now been debunked. Turns out that the drapes in the background were different, and not in her house, as the woman claimed. It appears the photo got on her phone because they had mutual friends on Facebook, and the woman got confused. We apologize for posting this story based on the incorrect info. The original story, crossed out, is below.

So, let's say you're a creepy dude, the kind that likes to brazenly break into other people's homes. Now let's say that, in addition to being a creepy criminal, you're also a complete idiot looking to get caught, the kind we've covered in the past. How exactly do you find the perfect combination of self-incrimination while maintaining the high level of creepiness you've spent so many years cultivating?

The victim told police she had no idea the man had been inside her home while she was there — until she checked her cellphone the next day. According to police, on Jan. 29 at approximately 9:20 p.m. a woman was putting her children to bed when an unknown man entered her home and used the woman’s cellphone to take a picture of himself.

Yes, apparently a gentlemen who is working entirely too hard on his Breaking Bad cosplay strategies (see video in the link) also decided to break into a house and take absolutely nothing other than a selfie on his victim's cell phone. Of course, because this is apparently an attempt by the burglar to get himself caught, neighbors recognized him and are working with police to identify the man.

“He doesn’t have glasses when you normally see him walking down the street. Maybe they’re a disguise. I don’t know,” said Gardner. When asked about the facial hair, Gardner replied, “Oh, that’s his, that’s him.”

As of the time of this writing, the man hasn't yet been caught by police, but one imagines that is simply a matter of time. After all, our dumb criminal went ahead and provided the single thing smarter bad guys work as hard as possible to avoid: a picture of his face. That kind of dedication to getting caught deserves our respect and our applause.

from the bad-laws-have-only-legally-dubious-uses dept

We've written a lot about the state of Illinois' infamous Eavesdropping Act, a law that has been routinely abused by Illinois law enforcement officers to prevent citizens from recording them while they work. After a long legal battle that nearly made its way to the Supreme Court, the courts found that the use of the law to prosecute citizens who record police officers was unconstitutional and the latest court to hear the state's arguments suggested the law be repealed altogether.

The law is still on the books at the moment (although LEOs can no longer use it against camera-wielding citizens), which may come in handy for the plaintiffs of a class action suit against an Illinois gas company. (h/t to Above the Law)

The lawsuit claims the gas company charged customers unnecessary fees to cover gas line leaks and repairs. According to an investigation that preceded the lawsuit, Nicor Gas collected nearly $26 million in 2009 while paying out only $600,000 in benefits. In a class action lawsuit filed in 2011, the plaintiffs allege that Nicor also charged several customers $19.95/mo. for appliance coverage (while labeling it only as "Nicor Service Charge" on the bill).

The utility recorded millions of phone calls over the course of a decade and plans to “divulge them outside of Nicor and to use them in court as they litigate the consumer class action,” according to a statement about the case...

“The Illinois Eavesdropping Act flatly prohibits corporations who collect or make such recordings from divulging any part of them to any third party and prohibits such recordings be used in court proceedings,” said [Adam] Levitt (plaintiffs' attorney).

“Nicor Gas claims that all customers recorded heard a ‘warning’ before being recorded, and ‘consented’ by remaining on the line after the warning was given. But under the law, any consent only gave Nicor Gas a right to record, not to divulge or use the recordings. Any ‘consent’ they got from customers that permitted them to record was for the limited purpose of internal quality assurance – not for divulgence to outside parties, and certainly not for use in public court proceedings,” according to Levitt.

Even if this use of the Eavesdropping Act may be somewhat questionable given the circumstances (the most probable defense against the claims is that customers agreed to these charges during phone conversations with Nicor Gas), it's hard to see how the power company will route around the specifics of the law.

No communication or conversation or any part, portion, or aspect of the communication or conversation made, acquired, or obtained, directly or indirectly, under this exemption (j), may be, directly or indirectly, furnished to any law enforcement officer, agency, or official for any purpose or used in any inquiry or investigation, or used, directly or indirectly, in any administrative, judicial, or other proceeding, or divulged to any third party.

Exemption (j) covers recorded business-to-consumer "oral telephone solicitation and marketing" recordings. Incoming calls ("What the hell is THIS charge?") are also covered by this exemption.

For the purposes of this subsection (j), "telephone solicitation" means a communication through the use of a telephone by live operators:

(i) soliciting the sale of goods or services; (ii) receiving orders for the sale of goods or services; (iii) assisting in the use of goods or services; or (iv) engaging in the solicitation, administration, or collection of bank or retail credit accounts.

According to a ComfortGuard marketing script, Nicor call-center reps are instructed to tell customers "the utility is only legally responsible to make the situation safe or make repairs to its own facilities. What that means is that the property owner (such as yourself) may have to find and hire an independent contractor to come in, do an inspection and then make those repairs. That can be expensive, and it could also mean days without any gas to heat the home, cook and so on."

We'll have to see where Nicor goes with this, but the allegations are pretty damning, and it's hard to see how its own sales tactics and vague line item descriptions are going to help its case. Even if it is interesting to see this law being used as a defense mechanism rather than a weapon against citizens, it only helps to highlight how badly written the Illinois Eavesdropping Act is. If nothing else, it presents yet another reason for legislators to seriously consider scrapping the law and starting over.

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Studying how language can predict behavior is a fascinating field. As communications are increasingly digital, everyone's messages are more easily data mined for all sorts of analysis (ahem, and not all of it is done by the CIA). Marketing folks are looking at how catchy phrases might increase sales -- which may be why you're seeing more headlines like "8 simple ways to ..." and "one simple trick that ..." in ads. Here are just a few other linguistic studies for you to peruse. Also, happy belated National Grammar Day!

Can the language you speak influence your behavior? Speakers of languages with weak future tense grammar (eg. German, Finnish and Estonian) seem to correlate with more future-oriented behaviors such as an increased rate of financial saving, lower rates of smoking and higher rates of exercise, and higher condom usage -- compared to speakers of languages with stronger future tense grammar like English and French. [url]

from the more-of-the-same dept

Ever since first responder emergency communications failed back on 9/11, there has been a concerted effort to try and build some kind of wireless, national emergency communications network. In typical Congressional fashion, this included several years of yelling, screaming, disagreement, and general histrionics. After more than a decade, the Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act of 2012 finally created the First Responder Network Authority (FirstNet), which according to its website will coordinate the build of an 700 MHz LTE-based emergency broadband network that piggybacks on existing networks.

FirstNet was recently hit with a small scandal after Iowa Sheriff and board member Paul Fitzgerald complained that FirstNet had been hijacked by large carriers like Verizon and AT&T. According to Fitzgerald, FirstNet spent its first few years of existence with carrier-tied leaders conducting secret meetings, making decisions outside of the board room, hiring outside industry consultants with ties to industry, and elbowing out participants with actual security and emergency backgrounds.

Not to worry though, because FirstNet, whose GM is former Verizon executive Bill D'Agostino, investigated itself and declared that nobody broke the law. Granted, concerns were about conflict of interest, not violation of law, and an investigation is ongoing by the Inspector General of the Department of Commerce. While these accusations were being flung about, companies like Motorola were also rumored to be trying to scuttle the whole project, preferring to continue to make money off the scattered ad hoc selection of emergency communications services using their radio hardware.

Not too surprisingly, all of this appears to have resulted in little to no actual work getting done despite the $7 billion budget (which most agree will balloon handsomely before anything even gets built). According to a new report by a FirstNet State Point of Contact in the State of Washington, the entire project now appears to be stuck in neutral as agencies and companies scurry for their piece of the pie, with key staffing positions remaining left unfilled two years later, and the people who were hired getting paid handsomely with not much to show for it:

"I’ve heard – but cannot verify – that some of the contract staff hired in late 2012 and 2013 were paid $300 an hour...The contract under which the staff were hired expired in October 2013. Most of the existing 35 or so contracted staff (who were quite competent, by the way) were laid off. Three new contracts were established in October. But as of this writing – four months later - no technical contractors, and only a handful of public relations contractors, have been hired. How do you create a nationwide design and individual state-specific plans for a wireless network without technical staff?......key positions go unfilled, such as the CIO and CTO positions."

Two years into a $7 billion project and just 25 people have been hired, many of them focused on public relations. Worse, numerous existing communications networks that were being used were put on indefinite hold so this new network could be built, meaning in some areas emergency communications is actually worse for our $7 billion. If that's not a fantastic start I'm not sure what is. Can the United States actually work cohesively together to build anything on a national scale anymore (OK, outside a total surveillance state)? Or are we really so broken, corrupt and incompetent that even providing emergency communications to the people who save our lives is a bridge too far?

from the just-get-the-hell-out-of-the-way dept

As we recently noted, Dish has announced a new content distribution deal with CBS that's quite the double-edged sword. On one hand, Dish has agreed to cripple the ad-skipping feature on their Hopper DVR for ABC and Disney content for the first three days after a new episode airs. In exchange for Dish making their service less useful, ABC has agreed to drop their absurd lawsuit claiming that ad-skipping violates copyright. ABC has also agreed to loosen up restrictions on streaming content, allowing Dish to potentially offer an "over the top" Internet video streaming service sometime down the road.

This has, of course, resulted in the usual press hype from reporters who don't understand how difficult broadcasters make getting these types of services off the ground (just ask Intel, Sony, Microsoft, Apple, Google, and countless startups). Bloomberg, for example, right after telling readers it's too early to speculate on price for such a service, immediately proceeds to speculate on price for such a service -- claiming a new Dish Internet TV service would only cost users between "$20 and $30 a month."

There's still a lot of things standing in Dish's way -- assuming Dish is competent enough to craft a decent service in the first place. We can't read the contract, so we have no idea what restrictions Disney, ABC and ESPN are going to layer on this new licensing agreement to cripple it to the point of uselessness (oh hi Hulu, didn't see you standing there). Dish also needs to sign on a lot more broadcasters to flesh out a service catalog, something that's not going to be easy. Quickly proving that point, CBS CEO Les Moonves stated at an investor conference he's going to expect Dish to cripple Hopper much more severely if Dish expects a similar deal from CBS:

"Mr. Moonves, speaking at a Morgan Stanley investor conference, said the arrangement is "not quite enough for us." Several broadcasters, including CBS, say increasing numbers of viewers are watching TV shows more than three days after they air, via DVRs or on-demand services. Mr. Moonves has been among the executives pushing for the industry to shift to a model where advertisers pay for seven days of viewing instead of three. He said CBS's carriage deal with Dish expires this year, and he expects to take a different approach than Disney in the negotiations with Dish Chairman Charlie Ergen. "We are going to want to do some different things," he said, noting that Disney has different assets and priorities."

Who knows what kind of demands CBS is going to make, but it's pretty clear the demands will include making the Hopper DVR even less useful, while saddling any streaming agreement with just enough restrictions to prevent it from actually being disruptive. On one hand it could make sense for Dish to tell CBS to go to hell, as the broadcasters losing in court would set precedent that protects ad skipping from copyright claims. On the other hand, doing that would mean yet another over the top disruptive Internet TV service would die in the cradle thanks to myopic, terrified broadcasters.

from the that's-odd dept

We've written a few times about the terrible ruling from Judge Alex Kozinski, the chief judge of the 9th Circuit, finding a bizarre copyright interest by an actress who appeared in 5 seconds of the 13 minute "trailer" for the controversial "Innocence of Muslims" video, thus allowing her to get all copies of the video taken off of Google sites. Google quickly filed for a stay, noting that the ruling was likely to be overturned, and it made no sense to allow for this controversial censorship which likely violated the First Amendment, until such time as the details could be reviewed en banc (by a larger panel of judges). Kozinski almost immediately rejected the request for a stay.

Now, in a move that is quite odd, one of the other judges on the 9th Circuit has apparently asked the court to reconsider the motion for a stay en banc. This is surprising on a few levels. First, it's quite rare to see such a "sua sponte" request. That is, it's common for the parties in the lawsuit (i.e., Google) to request an en banc hearing, but it's not at all common for a judge to step in and make the request for an en banc hearing of his or her own accord. But that's what's happened here. It's important to note that the request for an en banc hearing is only covering the issue of whether or not the court should stay the original order, and not about reviewing the original order (which is likely to happen separately). I assume this is so that things can happen much more quickly with a review of the narrow question of whether or not Google should be forced to keep the content down while the original order is debated.

Either way, the parties have been asked to file briefs on whether or not an en banc panel should explore whether or not their should be a stay on the original order by next Wednesday, so there should be a pretty quick turnaround on this one. Still, the fact that a judge decided to do this suggests that there's at least one judge in the 9th Circuit who is uncomfortable with Kozinski's ruling. We already knew that there was strong dissent to his opinion, and it's possible that the judge requesting this is the one who dissented, but it's still a somewhat surprising move.

from the too-bad dept

I'm going to assume that many of you are familiar with Richard Feynman. If you're not, please get out from under the rock you've been living under and go learn something. While he's probably most well-known in the public for his (not always 100% truthful) collection of stories, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!, folks of a geekier persuasion are much more aware of his contributions to science and, in particular, the famed Feynman Lectures on Physics. It took way too many years to get those lectures online after (you guessed it) a fight over copyrights. However, online the lectures went and now it appears that publisher Perseus is unfortunately using the DMCA to block attempts to make the works accessible via Kindle or EPUB formats.

Eric Hellman posted the story at the link above, with this being the key part:

Vikram Verma, a software developer in Singapore, wanted to be able to read the lectures on his kindle. Although PDF versions can be purchased at $40 per volume, no versions are yet available in Kindle or EPUB formats. Since the digital format used by kindle is just a simplified version of html, the transformation of web pages to an ebook file is purely mechanical. So Verma proceeded to write a script to do the mechanical transformation – he accomplished the transformation in only 136 lines of ruby code, and published the script as a repository on Github.

Despite the fact that nothing remotely belonging to Perseus or Caltech had been published in Verma's repository, it seems that Perseus and/or Caltech was not happy that people could use Verma's code to easily make ebook files from the website. So they hauled out the favorite weapon of copyright trolls everywhere: a DMCA takedown.

You can see the DMCA here as well as the counternotice, which notes that the software doesn't contain any copyrighted materials (though there's some confusion over who owns the copyright, Caltech or Perseus). Hellman, while admitting he's not a lawyer, further suggests the DMCA takedown is invalid because it's just code... but then further notes that the Feynman Lectures website has put in some code to block the script -- and that Verma has coded around this:

In the meantime, the Feynman Lectures website has taken some steps to break Verma's script. For example, instead of a link to http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/II_28.html (my favorite chapter), the table of contents now has a link to javascript:Goto(2,18). This will take about 10 minutes for Verma to work around. In addition, the website now has a robot exclusion (except for Googlebot).

Of course, that introduces a new (and unfortunate) problem. As problematic as it is, the anti-circumvention clause of the DMCA, 17 USC 1201 makes it against the law to get around any "technological measure" no matter how stupid or weak, and thus the effort by the website to block it may introduce a new problem, though likely different than what Perseus initially claimed in its takedown.

Making things even more convoluted, the editor of the Feynman Lectures, Michael Gottlieb, jumped into the fray and made things even more confusing and misleading:

The online edition of The Feynman Lectures Website posted at www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu and www.feynmanlectures.info is free-to-read online. However, it is under copyright. The copyright notice can be found on every page: it is in the footer that your script strips out! The online edition of FLP can not be downloaded, copied or transferred for any purpose (other than reading online) without the written consent of the copyright holders (The California Institute of Technology, Michael A. Gottlieb, and Rudolf Pfeiffer), or their licensees (Basic Books). Every one of you is violating my copyright by running the flp.mobi script. Furthermore Github is committing contributory infringement by hosting your activities on their website. A lot of hard work and money and time went into making the online edition of FLP. It is a gift to the world - one that I personally put a great deal of effort into, and I feel you are abusing it. We posted it to benefit the many bright young people around the world who previously had no access to FLP for economic or other reasons. It isn't there to provide a source of personal copies for a bunch of programmers who can easily afford to buy the books and ebooks!! Let me tell you something: Rudi Pfeiffer and I, who have worked on FLP as unpaid volunteers for about a decade, make no money from the sale of the printed books. We earn something only on the electronic editions (though, of course, not the HTML edition you are raping, to which we give anyone access for free!), and we are planning to make MOBI editions of FLP - we are working on one right now. By publishing the flp.mobi script you are essentially taking bread out of my mouth and Rudi's, a retired guy, and a schoolteacher. Proud of yourselves? That's all I have to say personally. Github has received DMCA takedown notices and if this script doesn't come down pretty soon they (and very possibly you) might be hearing from some lawyers. As of Monday, this matter is in the hands of Perseus's Domestic Rights Department and Caltech's Office of The General Counsel.

This is icky on multiple levels. First of all, Gottlieb is engaging in slight copyfraud in overclaiming what his copyright enables him to block. Further it is not necessarily the case that anyone, let alone "everyone" is "violating [Gottlieb's] copyright" merely by running the script. There are plenty of legitimate reasons why running that script may be perfectly legitimate, and legal cases that have suggested place and time shifting content is a legal fair use would certainly come into play here. Furthermore, the argument that Github is somehow contributorily liable is highly questionable, and Gottlieb really ought to talk to a copyright lawyer before making such a leap.

But from there to shift into how important it is to make the work available to the world... just seems strange. If that's the case, why is he freaking out so much?

Either way, the whole situation seems unfortunate, but once again, that's what you get with our crazy copyright law and the DMCA takedown process.

from the there's-much-more-at-stake-here dept

We've been writing quite a bit about the Aereo case lately, which is scheduled to be heard by the Supreme Court in late April. The case has an awful lot of powerful people and organizations lining up on both sides, filing briefs with the Supreme Court. Some have pointed out that Aereo's technology really isn't particularly innovative, and in fact, we've discussed how its setup is basically insane from a technology standpoint, but that the company is forced into building it that way to stay within the law (or so it and its supporters believe).

But some seem to be wondering why this one technology company, with something of a legal kludge is so important. It is incredibly important for reasons that have almost nothing to do with Aereo's actual service. Rather, it's about how the Supreme Court will interpret a key part of the Copyright Act, which could have an astoundingly bad chilling effect on pretty much all cloud computing. This may not seem obvious at first glance, since few people associate Aereo with cloud computing. Matt Schruers does a nice job breaking down the key point, however, as to why this one decision will have far reaching implications well beyond Aereo. And it all comes down to how the Supreme Court defines what is a "public performance."

Aereo’s position is that when Aereo subscribers pay for access to an antenna and direct it to send them back a unique copy of a particular broadcast, this is private. Different users access different antennae at different times, and each user receives a different copy of a work — even if they’re watching the same broadcast. Aereo isn’t rebroadcasting one work to thousands; it gives technology to thousands who at different times use that technology to access and possibly store different copies of works that they’re already lawfully entitled to receive. This is not unlike the Sony Betamax, which didn’t copy television, but gave thousands of consumers the technology to make reproductions of television content that they were already lawfully receiving.

Broadcasters have responded by saying that none of this matters; Aereo is infringing, they contend, so long as a given work is made available to multiple members of the public, even if Aereo does it with different unique copies, and at different times.

The problem with this rationale is that it applies with equal force to cloud storage like Dropbox, SkyDrive, iCloud, and Google Drive. If multiple people store their own, unique, lawfully acquired copy of the latest hit single in the cloud, and then play it to themselves over the Internet, that too sounds like the broadcasters’ version of a public performance. The anti-Aereo rationale doesn’t distinguish between Aereo and the cloud.

If you don't think that copyright holders won't take a victory here and go after various cloud services, you haven't been paying attention to the history of copyright fights over the past few decades.

And this is part of why the US Solicitor General's brief in support of the broadcasters is so ridiculously problematic. It tries to address that issue of cloud computing, by basically saying it might not be a big deal, because no company will require a license. However, other briefs in support of the broadcasters say it's no big deal because everyone can just get a license. One of those can't be true.

the U.S. Government (USG), for example, carefully hedges, saying that a decision for the broadcasters “need not threaten cloud computing.” It conspicuously does not argue that it will not threaten the cloud — only that the decision need not, implicitly conceding that a decision for the broadcasters could still be fatal for the cloud. The USG’s rationale is that as long as a consumer has lawfully acquired media in the first place, no cloud service need worry that someone will demand a license. Inconveniently for the USG, however, several other briefs filed concurrently argue that cloud computing services need not worry because, hey, everyone can just get a license! Setting aside the fact that there’s no way to ensure that all files in the cloud are licensed, this point substantially undercuts the USG’s position. Even as the USG is telling the Court that cloud services need not fear they’ll be demanded to take licenses for everything users put in the cloud, other interests are telling the Court that cloud services should do exactly that. Arguably, it doesn’t advance the broadcasters’ case that even their supporters cannot agree on whether cloud services would have licensing problems.

The ruling in this case matters, even if you don't care at all for Aereo's particular service. The wider impact on a variety of useful services could be massive. In fact, we've seen this before. Aereo's court wins to date rely heavily on the ruling that found Cablevision's remote DVR legal -- which similarly focused on defining whether or not that product involved a "public performance" that needed to be licensed. There, the court found that they did not. However, courts in other countries have found otherwise. That set up a nice natural experiment, and Harvard professor Josh Lerner looked at changes in venture capital investment into cloud computing offerings in the immediate aftermath of similar rulings, finding that the Cablevision ruling (saying not a public performance, and thus protecting the cloud) helped to spur tremendous investment in innovative new services -- to the tune of about $1 billion.

No matter what you think of Aereo, this decision will have a major impact on what sort of internet we have going forward.

from the everybody-loses dept

As we just got done discussing, AT&T, Verizon and Sprint recently were able to dodge a long-running lawsuit alleging the companies have been dramatically overcharging the government for wiretaps for more than a decade. The lawsuit was filed by former New York Deputy Attorney General John Prather, who spent thirty years in the AG's office (and six years on the Organized Crime Task Force in NY) helping to manage wiretaps and invoices for wiretap provisioning. Prather filed the suit on behalf of the U.S. government, but telco lawyers were able to have the suit dismissed by arguing that Prather couldn't technically sue the telcos under the False Claim Act as a whistleblower, because he filed the original complaint while working for the government.

Now it appears that at least one of the telcos is being focused on for round two, with the news that the government is suing Sprint for overcharging for wiretaps under CALEA. Under CALEA phone companies are allowed to recoup "reasonable expenses," but the lawsuit claims that Sprint overcharged the government to the tune of $21 million, overinflating charges by approximately 58 percent between 2007 and 2010. The Prather case claimed the telcos overcharge for taps in general, but have historically dodged culpability by simply hitting the government with large bills that don't itemize or explain why a wiretap should magically cost $50,000 to $100,000.

Sprint appears to have been specifically nabbed by the Justice Department’s Inspector General because it wasn't clever enough about passing on the costs of modifying its network to adhere to CALEA back to the government, something the law prohibits:

"Despite the FCC’s clear and unambiguous ruling, Sprint knowingly included in its intercept charges the costs of financing modifications to equipment, facilities, and services installed to comply with CALEA. Because Sprint’s invoices for intercept charges did not identify the particular expenses for which it sought reimbursement, federal law enforcement agencies were unable to detect that Sprint was requesting reimbursement of these unallowable costs."

It should be interesting to see if AT&T and Verizon face similar lawsuits down the road, or if their lawyers and accountants were simply better at obscuring overbilling. It's kind of a lose-lose scenario for you and me either way. Not only do we get to be spied on, we likely paid for these wiretaps both on the taxpayer side and on the telco side as the companies passed on both real and imaginary wiretap costs to you.

from the free-country? dept

Just recently, we wrote about how the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) has been increasingly detaining and harassing people at the border (or near the border) under highly questionable circumstances -- and then refusing to comment on any of it. Instead, CBP has relied on a cloak of secrecy to live outside the law, acting out what we've come to expect from authoritarian police states. Recently, the ACLU filed a lawsuit on behalf of a woman, Christine Von Der Haar, who is a senior lecturer at Indiana University, after CBP detained her at the airport.

She was not entering or leaving the country. She was not even boarding a flight. She merely accompanied a friend to the airport so that he could retrieve some computer equipment that he had shipped separately a few days earlier. After detaining Von Der Haar, CBP officials, who clearly had access to some of the emails Von Der Haar and her friend had sent back and forth, quizzed her about her sex life and if she was planning to marry the friend.

CBP appeared to be concerned that the friend, a Greek national named Dimitris Papatheodoropoulos, was trying to stay in the country illegally. Von Der Haar had first met Papatheodoropoulos 40 years earlier while studying abroad, and the two had recently reconnected thanks to the internet. Papatheodoropoulos had obtained a B1/B2 business/leisure visa to the US which actually let him enter and leave the country for a period of 10 years. He came to the US for business, but while there also wished to visit Von Der Haar since they'd been catching up online.

After detaining and questioning Papatheodoropoulos for some time, CBP officials took Von Der Haar into another room and started asking questions specific to the emails between the two of them. According to the lawsuit:

Given that Mr. Papatheodoropoulos had retained his hard drive that contained the emails, the only way that the Customs and Border Protection Agents could have reviewed the emails is for someone to have surreptitiously monitored the communications between Dr. Von Der Haar and Mr. Papatheodoropoulos and reported those communications to the agents questioning her. Defendant Lieba admitted that employees of the United States had read email communications between Dr. Von Der Haar and Mr. Papatheodoropoulos.

This raises all sorts of serious questions. As the post at Papers Please (linked above) notes:

CBP officers grossly exceeded their jurisdiction. Dr. Dr. Von Der Haar’s US citizenship was never questioned; she wasn’t trying to enter, leave, or ship and goods in or out of the country; and she was never accused of any crime. In general, immigration (as distinct from customs) offenses are handled by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Border Patrol, not CBP. We’re curious what basis CBP will claim for its officers’ authority to detain and interrogate Dr. Dr. Von Der Haar or obtain her email.

The post also wonders how or why CBP got access to those emails, wondering if they were shared by the NSA. There are, of course, other possible explanations as various investigations may have resulted in CBP getting access to the emails separately, but it still raises serious questions about under what authority those emails were obtained and why she was then quizzed about her sex life.

The claims that officials made about Papatheodoropoulos were equally questionable. Again, from the lawsuit:

On June 8, 2012, Mr. Papatheodoropoulos was served
with notice that a proceeding was
initiated against him for removal from the United States. The notice stated, in relevant part:

You obtained your B1/B2 visa by misrepresenting your intentions to come to the
United States to wit; It is your intention to immigrate to the United States, you
abandoned your foreign residence, you intend to overstay your admission to the
United States.

None of this was true.

Mr. Papatheodoropoulos consulted with lawyers and the Greek Consulate in Chicago and
the removal action did not proceed.

His passport was returned to him and he left the United States at the end of August of
2012 and has not returned

The whole thing seems ridiculous yet again, and you can expect DHS to use its standard cloak of secrecy. I'm sure they'll argue some sort of state secrets or national security claim to try to get the entire case thrown out.

from the I-got-this-scar-from-my-coffee-maker dept

As we recently discussed, Keurig is busy making plans to embed new technology in their new "Keurig 2.0" line of coffee makers that will reject unsanctioned (read: less expensive, competing) coffee pods. The technology would also presumably prevent the use of manual re-usable filters, which are usually found for between five and fifteen bucks online. Keurig's CEO announced the plans to reject "unlicensed pods" last fall, but somehow nobody seemed to really notice the effort until an annoyed competitor pointed it out in a lawsuit (pdf).

Needless to say, Keurig users and the general public weren't particularly enamored of Keurig's plans to lock down their brewing options, with countless users taking to Twitter to complain. The company didn't seem prepared to handle the media reaction to their plans for java-based "DRM." Nor did they seem prepared to give anybody a straight answer, even though their own CEO already confirmed the pod-blocking functionality. As such, Keurig simply started insisting to anyone that asked that the new technology delivered "interactive-enabled benefits":

As you might be able to tell, it appears the company is unwilling to directly acknowledge the fact that they're locking out competitors' less expensive pods. More creative attempts to get Keurig to explain these advanced interactive benefits also proved fruitless:

After a few days and clearly a few meetings, Keurig released a public statement that attempted to flesh out their non-answer. While still refusing to admit something their own CEO already acknowledged, Keurig decided to push the mystery added benefits angle a little harder, even going so far as to claim that blocking you from getting cheaper competing product is about your safety:

"To make brewing a carafe possible, and to continue to deliver everything Keurig lovers already enjoy – high-quality beverages, simplicity, and variety – our new Keurig 2.0 system will feature specially designed interactive technology allowing the brewer to read information about the inserted Keurig pack. With this interactive capability, Keurig 2.0 brewers will “know” the optimal settings for the inserted Keurig pack, for a perfect beverage every time, whether a single cup or a carafe. It’s critical for performance and safety reasons that our new system includes this technology. For those of you who currently own our K-Cup or Vue systems today, we are so happy to have you as part of our family. Rest assured that your brewers will still function as they always have and that your favorite beverages will still be available."

In other words, we must be able to lock competitors' pods (and manual refill units) out of the market to keep you safe from the dangers of potentially lower costs and dreaded coffee-related injury. It's also impossible for us to embed this obnoxious technology in older units, so those will continue to function as you prefer them to -- without us interfering in your purchase options. Sure, you're losing purchase options and will have to pay more for coffee, but isn't the security of knowing your family is safe from the dangers of coffee-related hazards worth it?

from the regulatory-theatrics dept

As Comcast pushes for regulatory approval of its next major merger (the acquisition of Time Warner Cable), the company is pointing to its last major merger (the acquisition of NBC Universal) as an example of how tough regulators and meaningful merger conditions will keep the company honest as it grows ever larger. In an FCC filing (pdf) the cable giant pats itself on the back for over-delivering when it comes to meeting conditions placed upon the company after acquiring NBC. According to Comcast, it's "simply indisputable that we have honored – in fact, over-delivered – on our commitments."

The catch? Comcast created most of the NBC merger conditions itself, knowing full well it would meet them during the ordinary course of doing business. Still, in many cases even those conditions proved to be too much for the company.

Most of the NBC conditions involved promising modest broadband coverage goals by certain dates, goals the company was already on the cusp of completing (or in some cases had already completed) anyway. Other merger conditions, like offering $10, 1.5 Mbps broadband to families that qualify for the National School Lunch Program (you can't owe Comcast money -- which the poor usually do, and can't have existing Comcast broadband service), was something Comcast planned to offer much earlier but withheld to get the FCC to sign off on the deal. Comcast's "over delivery" on that condition resulted in protests on the streets of its home town of Philadelphia by people who claimed the option had too many restrictions and was intentionally designed to be difficult to sign up for (the company has since bumped the speed to 5 Mbps and extended the length of the offer indefinitely to help ease the Time Warner Cable deal).

Another vague condition prohibited Comcast from discriminating against channels that compete with its own content. Comcast struggled do that as well -- the FCC had to scold Comcast for holding Bloomberg news away from core news channels so it wouldn't hurt Comcast's CNBC (when singled out the company tried, unsuccessfully, to claim its First Amendment rights were being attacked). Another core "tough" condition Comcast cites as example of its over achievement was the promise to offer a 6 Mbps standalone broadband tier for $50 for a few years. From the filing:

"Requirement to provide BIAS on a standalone basis and to offer a new 6 Mbps down service at no more than $49.95 per month: Comcast continues to offer, on a standalone basis and at reasonable prices, any tiers of BIAS that it offers on a bundled or multi-product basis. Comcast also offers its “Performance Starter” tier, a 6 Mbps down standalone BIAS service, priced at $49.95 per month. Pursuant to the Broadband Consent Decree entered into with the Commission on June 27, 2012, Comcast will continue to offer Performance Starter at least through February 21, 2015."

Offering 6 Mbps for $50 is already pretty unimpressive on its face, but becomes even less impressive when you learn that the FCC had to fine Comcast $800 million (while extending the condition) because Comcast hid the option for consumers. Think about that: offering a paltry speed at a high price was too difficult to achieve, yet Comcast would like you to know it's an over achiever. After extending the condition, the FCC patted itself on the back for being so damn good at protecting consumers:

"The unprecedented merger condition extension, significant voluntary contribution, and robust compliance plan send a clear message to the American public and the communications industry that the FCC will vigorously enforce its merger conditions, to the ultimate benefit of consumers."

The message that FCC warning actually sent was that the government is historically only engaged in theater when it comes to most merger conditions. All too often, the "tough" conditions are either volunteered by the target company (because they're easy to meet or even already met), they're specifically designed to be meaningless (as we saw with AT&T's acquisition of BellSouth in 2006), they're conditions prohibiting the company from doing something it would never in a million years do (like block websites outright), or they are very selectively enforced. Like the FCC's dedication to broadband competition, the majority of merger conditions are simply a stage play put on for consumers and consumer advocates.

What does it say when you can't even meet merger conditions intended to be largely theatrical in nature? What does it say when you have trouble meeting merger conditions you yourself proposed? Clearly it says you're a fantastic, immensely-trustworthy overachiever.

This obviously raises the question of what conditions Comcast will urge regulators to impose on its acquisition of Time Warner Cable. Top Comcast lobbyist David Cohen appears to be pushing the promise that Comcast will spin off about three million of the acquired subscribers to form a new cable company. Comcast already expected to have to divest around three million of the acquired customers to another company like Charter (while keeping around 8 million), but spinning those three million users off into a new company would be more tax efficient. That new company wouldn't compete with Comcast, but you can expect that condition to be presented as Comcast being "forced" to improve market competition.

I'd expect the FCC to approve this merger, given deals have to be a unique, skull-rattling type of obviously awful and see unprecedented public outcry (read: AT&T T-Mobile) to prompt the FCC to action. Comcast doesn't directly compete with Time Warner Cable, and both the FCC and Comcast will paint legitimate worries about vertical integration, monopsony power, scale and content leverage as theoretical in nature. Such nuanced concerns are simply easier to take the bullshit bulldozer to in the media. As such, it's not clear what new, meaningless conditions Comcast and the FCC are currently cooking up to pretend to protect consumers from a larger, more powerful Comcast. Perhaps the company should be required to water the office plants? Strict oxygen inhalation and exhalation requirements? The options are limitless.

from the seems-fair dept

For those of us that tend to take Wikipedia and the way it works for granted, it comes as something of a shock to encounter someone who clearly doesn't understand it at all. That seems to be the case in a lawsuit brought by the Greek politician and academic Theodore Katsanevas against the Greek Wikipedia user and administrator Dimitris Liourdis, also known as "Diu". A post on the Wikimedia blog explains the situation:

Mr. Katsanevas complains that the Greek-language Wikipedia article about him contains some unflattering statements. Instead of addressing his concerns with the Greek-language Wikipedia community through the appropriate processes, Mr. Katsanevas chose to file a lawsuit against Diu.

The controversial statements in question reference the will of Andreas Papandreou, former Prime Minister of Greece and father-in-law of Mr. Katsanevas. The will allegedly characterized Mr. Katsanevas as a "disgrace" to the family and reportedly accused Mr. Katsanevas of "attempting to politically exploit George Papandreou", also a former Prime Minister of Greece. The statements were properly sourced and in accordance with Wikipedia policies.

An interesting question is how Mr Katsanevas identified the particular administrator. The latter has not made his personal information public. Despite this, the administrator told us in a telephone telephone interview that Mr Katsanevas had located him in 2009 at which point he had sent him notice demanding parts of the wikipedia entry be deleted.

In an e-mail interview with Ars [Technica], Liourdis described the situation in the courtroom last week. The hearing lasted just a few minutes, he wrote, and only the lawyers were allowed to speak. "My lawyer tried to explain [to the] judge how Wikipedia works and that I couldn't effectively remove the text," he wrote. "Anybody who knows how Wikipedia works knows that if he removes ... a text, which is verified by reliable sources, finally he will [be] banned from the project. We pointed that [out], but unfortunately she didn't understand."

Liourdis followed the judge's instructions to delete the text, but sure enough, it was quickly replaced.

The administrator noted that the lawsuit and publicity had produced a Streisand effect and that the original Greek article was now hosted in translation on multiple Wikipedias in English, Catalan, Polish, Yakut, French, German, Dutch, Spanish and Italian.

from the game-over dept

As recently noted, Candy Crush Saga maker King recently decided to back off their absurdly broad trademark on the word "candy." Instead, King chose to be obnoxious in other adventurous ways, recently acquiring an older, more specific trademark for the phrase "candy crush" that they're now using to bully other game makers for little to no coherent reason. The company is busy continuing their trademark abuses of the word candy over in the EU, and they're also continuing to bully Stoic, makers of the strategy-RPG The Banner Saga, for simply using the word saga.

We've also explored how some game makers have been creatively trolling King to bring greater attention to the absurdity of King's behavior. Like the indie developers behind the game Candy Jam, in which users are encouraged to create any sort of game with the word candy in it. But the award for most creative trolling attempt now has to go to the makers of Trademarkville, a game in which you're forced to decipher a King-lawyer crafted labyrinth of absurd trademark-constricted language for points. The game describes itself as such:

"In the magical town of TradeMarkVille every uttered word is instantly trademarked by the King's wizard-lawyers and banished from language. People are forced to devise increasingly bizarre ways to express their thoughts. Ordinary communication becomes a puzzle, prose becomes poetry. Will a new sense of understanding prevail against the sorcery of intellectual property?"

I'm not very good at it, but that appears to be the point makers Molleindustria and Mikhail Popov were trying to make about the royalmonarchnobodylikes.

Apparently, people who live in glass houses should not throw thermonuclear warheads (I think that's how that saying goes). Reports have emerged that top Cameron aide Patrick Rock -- who helped draw up proposals for the country's Internet porn filters -- has been arrested on suspicion of possession of child pornography. There seems to be some heated criticism pointed Cameron's direction for keeping the issue quiet, with several UK news outlets also suggesting Rock was given a little extra time between his dismissal and his arrest:

"Mr Cameron's official spokesman has confirmed that No 10 was first made aware of the alleged offence regarding child abuse imagery on the evening of February 12. The matter was immediately referred to the National Crime Agency (NCA) and Mr Rock resigned his position as deputy head of the policy unit. In the early hours of the morning of February 13 he was arrested at his home in London."

So if this timeline is correct (and the Guardian seems a little murkier on those specifics) the government was made aware of Rock's offense on February 12, Rock "resigned" on February 12, but he wasn't arrested until February 13 after the government contacted the NCA. Presumed innocent and all that, but it seems a touch hypocritical and inconsistent to whine like a screaming banshee for years about how everybody else isn't doing enough to protect the children, while your own staff member and architect of your porn filters is storing child porn on his PC. It's of course notably worse if it's found the government gave Rock a little extra time before law enforcement came calling (though perhaps the NCA just moves slower when it's higher ranking officials).

Regardless, I think it's time for UK ISPs to begin developing sophisticated algorithms capable of filtering out David Cameron's bad ideas from the public discourse.

All stakeholders are welcome to contribute to this consultation. Contributions are particularly sought from consumers, users, authors, performers, publishers, producers, broadcasters, intermediaries, distributors and other service providers, Collective Management Organisations, public authorities and Member States.

Optimists might see the extra time as a sign that the Commission is genuinely interested in gathering as wide a range of public views on this subject as possible. But a post from Paul Keller raises the possibility that this is just window-dressing, and that it has already made up its mind about what it will do on copyright regardless of what the public thinks. As he explains:

In recent weeks officials at the European Commission's Internal Market and Services Directorate General (which is in charge of copyright policy) have been passing around this diagram of what they call the 'Internet Ecosystem value tree':

Here's Keller's summary of what that shows:

The Internet Ecosystem value tree implies that the primary purpose of the Internet -- like that of all distribution channels that came before it -- is to channel content from producers (the Authors/Artists/Audiovisual and Record Producers/Newspapers and Books Publishers/Broadcasters/Other Creative Industries in the schema above) to a separate group of people called Consumers. In exchange for this the Consumers will pay Distributors and Internet Platforms money for their services, which is then augmented with advertising income. Distributors and Internet Platforms use parts of their income to pay for the content.

What the Commission implies here is that if this transmission belt of Euros does not work, then the entire Internet ecosystem will die off and as a result any public policy aimed at protecting the digital environment must ensure that content producers are paid.

Of course, that's a frighteningly retrogressive vision of the Internet that seems to regard it as simply the latest incarnation of television. As Keller points out:

Projects like Wikipedia, uses such as text and data mining, online access to cultural heritage and educational resources, and transformative use of the Internet do not follow the same logic as the traditional content industry value chains. Here limited user rights and long terms of protection become problematic and increased enforcement translates into chilling effects.

At the same time all of these types of uses are exactly what makes the Internet special and drives its potential to accelerate innovation and to democratize access to knowledge, tools and culture. The Internet is the first mass medium that is simultaneously enabling market driven uses, uses that are driven by public policy objectives (such as education or access to culture), and uses driven by people's desire to create, collaborate and contribute to the commons.

The rest of his post makes similarly insightful points, and is well-worth reading. If the European Commission's Internal Market and Services Directorate General really is thinking of the Internet as a "value tree" that requires a "transmission belt of Euros", let's just hope someone there reads Keller's post and realizes what a terrible mistake that would be.